Box.net Rallies Super Friends Against Microsoft

Twenty-six-year-old Box.net CEO Aaron Levie made headlines this fall when he called on entrepreneurs to join his peer-to-peer file-sharing outfit in its crusade to reinvent business software. And now he’s giving them an added nudge.

On Thursday, Levie and company launched what they call the Box Innovation Network — or /bin — a program that gives outside developers the opportunity to contract with existing Box customers and build new applications that run atop its file-sharing service. The program will also invest in startups and developers that Box deems particularly innovative, and in some cases, the company will supply office space and consulting resources.

Box hopes to seed new businesses, but also expand its own business. The idea is to build a network of smaller companies, utilizing Box’s file sharing and security features, that can challenge the likes of Microsoft, HP, and Oracle.

Rackspace, an intial /bin partner, will provide the opportunity for members to join the hosting giant’s partner network. In addition, VMWare’s Cloud Foundry will provide its open-source platform as a service to /bin members. Other /bin partners include Appcelerator, a mobile app developer; Heroku, a cloud application-building platform; SnapLogic, an application integrator developer; and Twilio, a VoIP and SMS application developer.

“Slow-moving enterprise software giants have produced very little innovation in recent years, and their closed ecosystems have made it all but impossible for outside players to create compelling experiences for customers on legacy systems,” read a statement from Aaron Levie, Box’s CEO.

“We’re changing all of that — and we’re doing so in ways that platforms like Microsoft simply cannot — by creating an open ecosystem of leading partners to enable developers to build and deploy Box applications instantly and on any platform.”

Levie is also plugging his service into other platforms. Earlier this month, Box was one of six companies that began feeding data into the enterprise social network powered by San Francisco startup Yammer. The aim is the same. “This is the kind of innovation that you just literally can’t see from Microsoft or Oracle,” he told Wired.

“They’re used to this vertical stack of software where you’re supposed to buy everything from them. And so they didn’t have to innovate because they had all these organizations locked in. Companies that forget about how to be a startup are the most ripe for disruption.”